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Wait… I don’t understand whether this is saying that polititians are trusted more or less than car salesman. I’ve gotta say I trust car salesmen more. I mean a car salesman is just trying to make a living to feed his family. There aren’t billions of dollars at stake for him to sell out your best interests like there are for our politicials.

A recent Gallup poll listed the most- and least-trusted professions in America. At the bottom of the list: car salesmen and members of Congress. It’s not hard to understand why our politicians rate so poorly — scandals, myopia, obstinance, party loyalty over common good, fiscal cliffs. All have left voters exasperated and confused. But while confidence in our elected leaders has never been lower, we cling to the belief that democracies represent the epitome of societal and political organization. Why?

With his provocative new book, In Mistrust We Trust: Can Democracy Survive When We Don’t Trust Our Leaders?, political commentator Ivan Krastev explores this incongruity between our political head and heart. There has been a profound decline of the public’s trust in the performance of public institutions, he notes, which is an outcome of the voters’ sense of their lost power. Tech tools may help provide some openness to…